Sagesse
by Chesh Writes
Summary: A journey all the way to a foreign country, a traipse up a perilous mountain, and Nyx still could not find the solitude she so desperately craved.


a/n: I KNOW NYX WENT TO SAGESSE JUST FOR THE SAKE OF PLOT CONVENIENCE but like it still fascinates me... she travelled all the way to some weird country and climbed a life-threatening mountain just to find a good place to be alone and die HOW SAD IS THAT

* * *

It was a cold day when Nyx packed her sparse things and set out for Notre Sagesse. She didn't want to leave her home, that tiny place in the middle of the forest, where she'd set up dozens of cloaking enchantments to keep her safe and sound over the decades, but a nobleman with less than good intentions had been skulking around her when she went into town lately.

Nyx had been used enough times to know that he wasn't good news.

Besides, Notre Sagesse seemed as good a place as any to die. It was warm there, the sun actually came out, and the people were notoriously good-natured and kind. There was also a perilous, life-threatening mountain that she could climb that would either kill her or give her the solitude she craved for the rest of her days. Either way sounded good to her.

She used all of her savings to buy a ticket to Notre Sagesse, and when she came up short, she offered her services as a mage in protecting the ship. The war with Hoshido meant that no ship was guaranteed safe passage, after all, and the captain seemed to know this; he nodded, took what money she could offer, and gave her a blanket and pillow and let her sleep in the cargo hold, which was fine with Nyx. There was a guard dog, a massive, fluffy thing, who came down to snuggle up to her at night, and scarcely anyone came down to the hold, so she had appropriate alone time.

The ship ran into no trouble while travelling, and no one needed her assistance, so she spent most of her time flipping through a tome and practicing little lightning spells. They amused the dog and gave the hold sufficient lighting, and gave her something to do while she waited to arrive. A crate near her caught on fire once, but it hadn't been much trouble to put out and nothing was damaged, so it was fine.

The captain thanked her profusely for her offered services when she left the ship- the crew had felt much safer with a mage on board. Nyx wondered if they would've felt so safe if they'd known who she was, but she didn't say anything, instead opting to smile and accept their thanks. She hoped they would be just as safe on the way back to Nohr. Hoshido wasn't particularly aggressive under normal circumstances, but war changed people. A war ship, a cargo ship, it didn't matter, because they were all Nohrian ships.

The sky was very bright, and Nyx squinted as her eyes adjusted. Nohr didn't get so bright on even the hottest summer day, and certainly not so warm. She shed her cloak as she walked through the town, rested it over her arm, and shouldered her pack. Her skirt was a bit too thick for the weather, but even if she overheated on her climb, it wouldn't matter. Part of her was banking on not surviving to the very top, after all.

"Did you see that army that passed through here?" Nyx heard a woman whisper as she passed by. "Looked like a mix of Nohrian and Hoshidan!"

"Weirdest thing I ever saw in my life," said another. "Seems like they were looking for the Rainbow Sage."

"Poor fellows probably won't survive the climb, much less the trials of the Sanctuary."

Nohrian and Hoshidan? That _was_ unusual, Nyx thought. Just a month before she had heard news of the crown princes of both countries being at each other's throats in Cyrkensia. In any case, what reason did Nohrians and Hoshidans have to join forces? Was it a small rebellion, a force fighting against the larger war?

Pah. Didn't matter to her. She had a mountain to climb.

"You best be careful," an older-looking gentleman warned her when she asked for directions. "Mount Sagesse is no place for a young lady like you."

Nyx forced a smile. "I'll keep that in mind."

She was older than him.

The perils that people faced on the climb were generally just nature, she'd read during her stay on the ship. Overly aggressive wildlife, quick changing weather, intense heat in the summers, and just the sheer length and steepness of the mountain's path. Nyx felt confident that she could deal with aggressive wildlife- a quick burst of light from her hand had scared off many a bear and wolf in her decades- and weather never really bothered her. Perhaps her body would give out before she got to the top.

And that would be just fine.

When she started up the path, she noticed a good number of footprints leading up the mountain, and recalled what the town women had said about the Nohrian-Hoshidan army that had arrived just before her. She wondered if they would make it all the way to the top. Would she pass their corpses? Or, would they survive, and while they travelled back down, would they come by hers?

Nyx climbed for hours, and she had to stop more than a few times to rest. Her body wasn't used to such hard physical labor- most of her time in the past years had been spent reading, not hiking. Her throat felt like it was closing up and her tongue already felt swollen and dry after only three hours, despite all the water she'd drank. It was with a pang of annoyance that she realized she still had quite a bit of a ways to go until she got to the top. Maybe six hours without a break? Eight? And it looked to only get steeper, she noted, and it was fluctuating so dangerously between hot and cold that she concluded that it was the work of an enchantment.

A very powerful enchantment.

Was the Rainbow Sage at the top really so powerful? She thought for a moment that maybe he could dispel the curse on her, but then brushed the notion to the side. Decades had passed now, and she didn't have any more hope left in her. She was not in the mood for any of it to be rekindled and then squashed again. There'd been enough of that in her life, and she was tired.

Nyx was so tired.

She abandoned her cloak somewhere along the way without realizing it. The mountain got so steep that she had to lean forward and grab rocks to help pull herself along, all the while wind pulled at her hair and attempted to shove her back. She recognized it more and more as magic, right down to the ferocious looking grizzly bear in her path. When she scowled and snapped her fingers, it vanished into thin air, leaving only a wisp of the illusion behind.

Whoever the Rainbow Sage was, he either had many apprentices to cast these spells, or he was one of the most powerful mages seen in the past century.

Maybe, she thought briefly, then shoved it away again.

The sanctuary came into sight after even more hours upon hours of walking, far more than what she had estimated previously. The sanctuary was a faint shape in the distance, lit up with torches and light spells in the black of the night. Nyx sighed and dropped her bag, having finally found a patch of the mountain flat enough to sleep on for the evening, and she sat. A quick wave of her hand produced a fire, hovering carefully over the ground, and it washed light over the clearing.

She drank the rest of her water, stale from being exposed to the air so many times over the course of the day, and ate half of a peach purchased in the port town. A deer curiously poked its head out from some shrubbery at her, and she gave it the other half when she determined it wasn't an illusion. It chirped a bit and happily trotted off with the offering given.

The night was turning perilously cold, and Nyx wished that she hadn't dropped her cloak somewhere. She called the fire closer to her with a bend of her finger, and it hovered over dutifully. She sighed, inched a bit closer to it, and turned the pit of the peach over in her hands, feeling the divots and wrinkles.

"That's quite the talent you have there."

Nyx jumped at the sound of the voice and held out a hand, the words to a spell on her mind, but the person who had suddenly appeared was only an old man. A tall, wizened old man with a long white beard, who leaned against a twisted cane. He didn't appear phased at her hostile display at all, but instead smiled and asked, "May an old man sit?"

She narrowed her eyes- An ordinary old man had no chance of making it all the way up this high into the mountain. So who was he? Another illusion? She snapped her fingers as she had done with the bear before, but the spell bounced right off the old man, as if hitting a very solid wall. Not an illusion.

The old man dug into the inside of his coat for a moment after easing himself down, and then pulled out a clump of dried meat, shriveled as the peach pit in her hand. He didn't hesitate to offer it to her, and Nyx eyed it warily.

"Would you like to eat?" he asked kindly.

"Have you poisoned it?" she asked bluntly.

The old man laughed so hard that it looked like the action would shatter him. After a moment, he shook his head and offered it again. "No, madam. It's not poisoned."

"I don't eat a lot of meat."

"You're thin as a willow tree. It would do you some good to eat a little more meat." He urged the lump towards her again, and, reluctantly, she took it.

"Who are you?" she questioned. She urged the fire to move between them, hoping that some of the warmth would reach his old bones. "You aren't human."

"Perceptive." He sounded very impressed. "I would have expected nothing less from Nohr's greatest mage."

She winced and brought the dried meat to her mouth. "Are you a god, sir?"

He smiled again. "Oh, not really. I'm just a very old man, even by your standards."

It felt nice to have someone acknowledge her actual age, Nyx thought. The last time she had been treated as an older woman had been… Hm. She didn't remember. And it didn't matter, anyways.

"That's a lie," she told him. "I'm a soothsayer. I know when people are lying." He stayed quiet, and she regarded him for a moment. "You are the Rainbow Sage, aren't you?"

"Perceptive, perceptive," he repeated. He leaned his cane against his shoulder and held his hands out to the fire. It moved towards him without Nyx asking it too, and it made her feel uneasy. Her magic had never obeyed anyone but herself before.

"What have I, a sinful old witch, done for the great honor of the Rainbow Sage's presence?" she asked. Her teeth dug into the meat, and she found it surprisingly soft and easy to eat, not to mention that it did taste very good.

"It's not often that even someone like myself meets someone like you," he mused. "A human so wicked that the gods saw it fit to punish her so severely forever, and at such a young age. I wanted to see if you were as horrible as they all say." His eyes roved over her, glinting in the light of the fire. "But, you look like a sweet woman. Weighed down with your sins, yes, but I sense not a hint of malice in you anymore."

She grimaced and set the meat down on her pack. A harsh breeze filtered through the trees, and she snapped her fingers. The fire grew larger. "I'm old. I have no more energy to be evil."

The sage grabbed his cane in both his hands. "It's not only that, is it? Haven't you truly been trying to repent?"

She ran a hand over her skirt and smoothed out a large fold. "I've been trying to be… good. I don't want to see anyone else suffer at my hand anymore."

"Becoming old puts things into perspective, doesn't it?" He shut his eyes and leaned towards the fire. "You are a wise old woman, despite how everyone else on this planet perceives you, isn't that right?"

"I'm not wise," she snapped. The fire flickered and moved towards the sage, as if afraid by her sudden outburst. "I am not wise, and I am not good."

"You are, ah, a 'sinful old witch,' correct?" he mumbled. "If you say so, my dear."

Silence sat over them for a while, and Nyx busied herself by throwing the peach pit into the fire and watching it burn. The fire seemed delighted to be fed, and it hovered back towards her, though stayed close enough to the Rainbow Sage to also keep him warm. She watched the man carefully, noting the thinness of his skin and stiffness in his limbs. Was he truly a god? A powerful mage?

"There's an army on their way up this mountain," she said finally, "on their way to see you. Will you help them?"

The sage opened his eyes and peered at her. "It depends on if they make their way through my Sanctuary's guards. If they do, and the leader proves that they are worthy of holding the sacred blade, I will be more than glad to grant them my power." He squinted out at the trees, as if seeing something she did not. "Something terrible is coming, after all."

"'Sacred blade?'" she muttered. "'Something terrible?' How very dramatic. And here I was thinking they were fools without a cause, marching to their deaths."

"I haven't seen a group of young folk do so well climbing this mountain in decades," the sage mused. "And there's another climbing. An older man. I suspect he's passed you by now. He seems very determined."

"Do so many people usually try to climb this mountain?" she asked.

"No. Or, at least, not so many in this short a span of time," he responded. "But fate seems to be pulling them all here now."

Nyx picked up a stray stick from the ground and tossed it to the fire. "Isn't fate a cruel thing?"

The old man chuckled. "Ah, it's so nice to talk with someone closer to my age. I'd forgotten how much I missed the cynicism of old folk."

The fire crackled between them for a while. The sage mumbled under his breath, rubbed his hands together, and shut his eyes, as though preparing to take a nap. Nyx turned her attention to the top of the mountain in the distance, looking at the faint outline of the Sanctuary and the light spells floating around it. Her eyes narrowed as she considered the illusions, the nature spells, everything she had seen that day, and before she knew it:

"Can you please help me?"

The Rainbow Sage opened his eyes and peered at her, squinting as though he could not see her well. "Help you, madam? In what way?"

"Do not play dumb," she warned. "You know I am cursed. That is why you came here. I've been climbing this ridiculous mountain all day, and I know that almost everything up here is magic. If you are truly such a powerful being, then perhaps you could break this curse on me."

He stared, his eyes wandering over her, and then laughed quietly. "I'm afraid that that is impossible, even for me. I'm sorry."

Her heart clenched and sank, and she bit her lip. She should have known, shouldn't have even asked in the first place. Shouldn't have gotten her hopes up again, like she had so many times in the past, only to be viciously let down over and over and over.

"I see," she whispered, and she stared into the glow of the fire. "Thank you for answering me honestly."

The rustle of clothes pulled her attention to the sage again only a second later. He stood, leaning heavily on his cane, and coughed into his hand before beating his robes free of dirt and wood. "It has been delightful," he said, "and it was nice to meet you, madam, but I must be going now."

Nyx picked up another stick and tossed it to the fire, still trying to mask her utter disappointment. "You have honored an old sinner like me with your presence. I promise to not speak of this, if you wish."

The Rainbow Sage shook his head. "Oh, it won't matter soon enough, my dear. And before I leave, let this old man impart some last words unto you."

Her eyes roamed over him, and she noted with shock that he seemed even weaker than when he had arrived not even a quarter-of-an-hour ago. She wondered if a god could die, and if that was what she was witnessing before her.

"I may not be able to break the spell on you," he said, and he held a finger up to the air with a coy smile. "But, I do think you will find something helpful at the top floors of my sanctuary. You have made it this far, I am sure you'll survive the rest of the journey tomorrow, and I hope you find what it is that will help you."

Nyx narrowed her eyes and wondered: Was the old sage playing a trick on her? Being mischievous? Part of her hope swelled again, but she beat it down and swallowed heavily, only offering a nod to him as he turned and slipped into the shadows of the forest. The fire moved back towards her and settled in a spot, no longer tempted by two different people, and she pursed her lips as she fed it yet another small stick.

The Sanctuary gleamed in the distance, and she wondered just what kind of help the sage had meant.

* * *

The trail of weapons and little puddles of blood had led her up to the top floors, and what she found wasn't peace, wasn't quiet, wasn't the "help" that the sage had promised her, but instead was a ragtag, scruffy army, fighting desperately for their lives against illusions that even she couldn't dispel with a quick snap, and it all irritated her.

She moved back towards the staircase and took a deep breath before pinching the bridge of her nose. "All I have wanted is to be away from society, from this war. Can not even Notre Sagesse offer me that?"

Well, no matter. Nyx had dealt with disappointment before. She would go back down those stairs, go back down the mountain, and-

"Excuse me? Miss?"

The voice startled her, and she pulled her Fimbulvetr out of her bag warningly. Instead of a hostile illusion, however, she found a tired-looking young woman with pale curls, her eyebrows knitted together in concern, holding out her hand.

"A girl like you shouldn't be here on her own!" the child said. "Come over here, and we'll protect you."

Briefly, Nyx thought back to the sage's words- " _You will find something helpful at the top floors of my sanctuary"_ \- and she regarded the child's hand curiously.

Something helpful.


End file.
